West Villages residents take counter measures in ZIP code tussle

Earle Kimel Staff Writer @earlekimel

Monday

Jan 8, 2018 at 7:46 PMJan 16, 2018 at 10:59 AM

NORTH PORT — In a move to outflank North Port city officials, West Villages residents have been contacting both the U.S. Post Office and U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney to state their case for keeping their Venice mailing address.

Victor Dobrin, a resident of Gran Paradiso who moved to the forefront of the quest to retain a Venice mailing address, said he will attend today’s City Commission meeting and, during public comment, read a letter he received last month from David M. Jordan, manager of operations programs support for the Suncoast District of the U.S. Postal Service.

That letter acknowledged receipt of a hand-signed petition from 2,200 West Villages residents who oppose the switch of ZIP codes for the development's residents from Venice to North Port.

In the letter, Jordan noted that ZIP codes were established for efficient mail processing and distribution and are linked to factors like “mail volume, delivery area size, geographic location, and our ability to provide our customers the best possible service.”

Jordan noted that there’s no pending plan to “make any changes at this time.”

Dobrin plans to read that letter and plead with the commission to change its tactics — which many West Villages residents view as bullying.

“It’s not useful, creates more divisiveness and alienates more voters in the West Villages if they continue to pursue something over which they have no authority,” Dobrin said during a recent group interview with eight other residents of either Island Walk or Gran Paradiso — the two most populous West Villages developments.

Pointing to the fact that they paid more for their homes to buy a Venice mailing address — even though they understood they pay taxes to North Port — many residents fear that a switch to North Port would mean decreased property values. Some retirees consider their Island Walk homes a last major investment that must be preserved.

Dobrin stressed that none of the residents opposing a ZIP code change are under the illusion they live in the city of Venice.

“I knew I was in North Port when I bought, but I wanted a Venice address and I paid for it,” Dobrin said. “It’s worth more; we are in a market economy.”

Currently, the West Villages is part of the 34293 ZIP code, which contains only a sliver of the city of Venice and consists mostly of unincorporated Sarasota County and the West Villages.

But the West Villages is a master-planned community marketed as an entity. Two neighborhoods — Sarasota National and Gran Palm — are in unincorporated Sarasota County. They’re also not part of the West Villages Improvement District, the special government agency empowered to sell bonds to pay for infrastructure and amenities such as the new Atlanta Braves spring training complex.

About two-thirds of the improvement district is within North Port city limits, including the Braves complex, proposed West Villages Town Center, and the neighborhoods of Gran Paradiso, Island Walk, The Preserve, Renaissance and Oasis.

Though the U.S. Postal Service associates the ZIP code with Venice, at least one online resource, city-data.com, considers most of the 45.8 square miles of the 34293 ZIP code as being in the city of North Port.

The site breaks down the area as 48.14 percent North Port; 12.1 percent South Venice; 5.59 percent Venice Gardens, and only 0.3 percent as the city of Venice.

About 5,500 people currently live in the West Villages. Roughly 4,900 of those are citizens of North Port too.

Dobrin and the West Villages residents may be farther along in their lobbying efforts than the city. So far, the city has reached out to the U.S. Postal Service via letter, asking for an update on its position. In a statement through a city spokesman, City Manager Peter Lear said the city expects to hear back from the postal service on its letter by the end of the month.

“In the meantime, we are currently in the planning stages for a series of Town Hall type meetings in the West Villages area,” Lear said. “It’s very important to the city of North Port to make sure we are reaching all of our residents.”

The question last came up in 2009-10, when a U.S. Postal Service survey asked West Villages residents — then mostly the residents of the Island Walk development — whether they wanted a North Port postal code instead of Venice. The survey came back 266-6 against a change.

That time was marked by exceptionally bold and demonstrative language, with the City Commission “demanding” that the ZIP code be changed to North Port and then city commissioner and current Mayor Vanessa Carusone widely quoted as wanting to shove the change “down their throat.”

That polarizing quote — which Carusone insists was directed at an intransigent U.S. Post Office and not West Villages residents — still stings.

“It’s still an action against the residents,” Gran Paradiso resident Kevin Shaughnessy said.

“The bottom line is, that’s their mentality: they’re going to stuff it down our throat,” said Mike Sepot, a Gran Paradiso resident who worked in real estate in Illinois. “They have a problem with the people living here.”

North Port officials raised the issue in November, ostensibly as a precursor to the next federal census — which city officials have argued in the past undercounted North Port residents — in hopes of having the change implemented before the count.

More than one West Villages resident equates the renewed interest to Carusone's winning a third term on the city commission in 2016. Carusone countered that it was always a city goal but “to a certain degree, the commission dropped the ball; they really should have been on it every single year until it was accomplished, but they had other things.”

The push is partly about city unity and about concerns that unless those rooftops are counted, the city could be shorted on federal and state funding, as well as grants.

West Villages residents point out that the next census will consider North Port as its own census tract — including areas of the master-planned community that lie within the city limits — and dismiss city assertions that ZIP codes could affect the results.

An underlying issue is that West Villages residents — already paying community development district fees to build infrastructure — don’t feel they’re getting enough value or attention from local government.

“We’ll use our voting privileges at some point in time to make sure we’re properly represented,” Shaughnessy said.

Inevitably, the finger points back to Carusone, who said she could support a West Villages ZIP code, as long as it has some sort of North Port tag, but maintains that a Venice mailing address for the West Villages communities will ultimately hurt North Port.

She cites grant applications for nonprofits that do rely on ZIP codes for areas served and a belief that some businesses use data culled by ZIP code to determine the number of rooftops in an area, to decide whether it’s big enough to consider for a location.

“I think it’s imperative that we have those rooftops counted in North Port,” Carusone said.

Dobrin is skeptical of the city's planned Town Hall meetings as long as the city maintains its position.

“If they are trying to make the community more cohesive, you do that by attractive with a carrot, not with a hammer,” Dobrin said. “Build and they will come."

“While Venice has it, we’ll go,” he added. “Give us an alternative or we’ll have our own in the West Villages, but don’t dictate. This is not the role of the government.”

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